On Monday, the Utes found out they will be traveling to the defending national champions’ hometown for regionals in two weeks, but they don’t seem nervous about it.
The Dumke Gymnastics Center filled with cheers when the announcement was made that No. 9 Utah will visit Alabama for the regional competition on April 6. Joining the Utes and the third-ranked Crimson Tide will be No. 15 Denver, No. 23 Kent State, No. 30 BYU and No. 35 Iowa State.
Utah has not faced Alabama this season, but has been to SEC country already this year. Utah visited Georgia on March 9, and Utah gymnasts feel confident about performing in an SEC arena.
“Right now I just feel that our kids are going to be comfortable in a big crowd,” said assistant coach Tom Farden. “They can handle that. That’s an advantage for us, and I feel our gymnastics will hold up well against those other teams.”
The Utes cheered loudly a second time when they learned rival BYU will be competing with them in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Utah put up its best road score of the season when it beat the Cougars in Provo 197.125-195.5.
The crowd in Alabama is likely to be very different from the one that showed up at the Marriott Center on March 1, which was close to half-filled with Utah fans. But Utah co-head coach Megan Marsden loves competing against the in-state rivals and said having the Cougars there is going to be a lot of fun.
“To go all the way across the country and meet your rival adds another dimension to it, especially if you’ve got that competitive spirit,” Marsden said. “I think our team has some of that. I like seeing that they’re excited about having people there that they are interested in beating.”
The excitement about the teams the Utes will be facing quickly changed into conversation about the rotation schedule, which Utah thinks will be favorable. The Utes will open the meet with a bye before starting on the uneven bars and then moving to the balance beam. Utah will have another bye in the fourth rotation before performing on floor and finishing the night on vault.
That rotation schedule will be different from the one the Utes went though at the Pac-12 Championships, where they led off with their two strongest events before finishing on beam — the one real question mark remaining at this point in the season.
Though Marsden thinks it will be nice to have beam “buried in the middle,” she said having byes in the meet does present some challenges. For Utah to be finishing on floor and vault — the two “power” events — it needs to handle the byes effectively to make sure gymnasts can compete at their highest level.
“It will be a very long night because you also do those byes in the warm-up as well, so the warm-up is long, then the meet is long,” Marsden said. “When we get underway in the afternoon and the meet finishes at 9 p.m. at night, they will have been on a long, several-hour deal. It’s really difficult to keep yourself at an emotional high for that period of time, so we try to handle that.”
Marsden said the gymnasts will have to work on settling down during the 40-minute byes and then getting themselves mentally prepared to go back on the competitive floor.
Either way, the gymnasts will be cheering and ready to go.